“You will lick the bar, or I will put your head in, on, or through it, Señor.”
“That is what you will have to do.”
The man made a grab for Consaida’s neck with his left hand, but found his left arm pushed up by Consaida’s right hand as Consaida ducked under it. A fierce left jab to the man’s left bottom rib, followed by a powerful right jab to the man’s left kidney left him sinking to his knees as he uttered an agonizing “ugh” from his cracked rib and terrible kidney pain. The man held onto the bar with both hands as he slid downwards. Consaida grabbed a hand full of the man’s hair and whispered in his ear as he sank to the floor.
“I do not think it is healthy in here, for you, Amigo. I suggest you leave now before bad things happen to you. Do not make me hurt you again. I can, and will, do terrible things to you, so why don’t you just leave. Do you understand me?”
The man nodded yes, as he winced in pain.
Consaida turned loose of his hair, picked up the pitcher of beer and walked casually back to the table as the man pulled himself up to the bar and staggered out the door.
“I think we have just been tested; one of the two men whom we met at the gate is sitting in the far corner, taking this all in,” said Captain Sabata with a smile. “Either we have been made or we just passed the test. Do not think any more about it. We shall see tomorrow.”
Gomez dialed the cell phone number of Miguel. “I think bad things are going to happen down here in the not-too-distant future. I think we are under close surveillance by our friends from the north. There are five men looking for work who are not workers, but well-trained people from across the river. I think it is close to time to come home.”
“I will leave it to your judgment not to stay too long but remain there as long as it is not too threatening. I need to know what is developing. It has taken the gringos long enough to figure things out. There might be a way for us to make some good money over this. If I need to contact you, I will leave word in a sealed envelope at the desk at the hotel there in town.” Gomez heard the click as Miguel switched off the phone. He went back into the bar to further observe those whom he perceived to be American agents of some nature. After they retired to their hotel rooms, he broke into their car and thoroughly searched it. He found nothing unusual or incriminating. He collected the man who picked a fight with Sergeant Consaida and drove back to the farm that night. The man moaned frequently but softly the entire trip. He took the man to the infirmary and left him there. Since it was so late, he reported to Jesus Gonzalez in the morning his observations, more convinced than ever that they were American agents. The nurse reported to Gonzalez that the man had two broken ribs and a bruised kidney. His urine would be tinged with hemoglobin over the next several days. He had to remain at bed rest until his urine cleared and his rib fractures stabilized.
Gonzalez pondered his courses of action. He could hire them and then kill them before they could report anything. He could hire them and keep them under observation to confirm that they were American agents and then act, or he could refuse to hire them. He decided the first course of action might bring even more agents and closer scrutiny, the second might allow them to see too much, and so decided on the third course. “Refuse them employment. Tell them we do not need any more help at this time, but to come back in three months if they are not well situated elsewhere and we will see then.”
Not willing to accept returning to Fort Bliss without information, Captain Sabata and his team drove back across the border and called his commander with a request. He wanted computers, binoculars, small arms, video equipment and more money. His request was denied, and he was ordered to return to Fort Benning via Fort Bliss. He dutifully drove back to El Paso and sold the car to the dealer from whom he purchased it at a $400 loss. They went to the USO, where they all took the shuttle bus back to Ft. Bliss. From Fort Bliss, they flew to Fort Benning in a C-130H just in time to make a practice jump.
Chapter 19
The South Koreans were fighting desperately, but slowly being pushed backwards by the sheer mass of manpower. After two weeks, Seoul was outflanked on the east and south, essentially surrounded. The main roads were more or less controlled by North Koreans, although isolated pockets of South Korean infantry continued to cut the roads and ambush convoys in a very irregular fashion. Moving more slowly, the North Korean infantry was overwhelming the countryside in the eastern portion of the peninsula. In places where the civilian refugees blocked the road by sheer mass, the North Koreans opened fire on them with automatic weapons, or in a few cases, simply drove T-64 and T-72 tanks over them to open the roads. Peasants were always easier to replace and in steady supply than skilled industrial workers of the cities.
At the beginning of the third week, North Korean destroyers began shelling Kunsan. North Korean armored forces were just outside of Taejon. The North had formed a line more or less through Ch’ungch’ong Namdo, running to the northeast towards Samchok. North Korean armor halted along the Choch’won –Ch’ongju road for rest and reupply, while the infantry to the east moved ten to twelve kilometers a day. Infantry units hopscotched around each other as they cleared the countryside of all resistance. Any village which offered resistance was destroyed by killing the inhabitants and burning the village. None were spared, not even children. Ch’ongju fell before the week was out. Many in the western part of the country fled into the low mountains to the east, where they would ultimately come into contact with the advancing infantry.
By the middle of the fourth week, South Korea was squeezed into a line roughly running from Kunsan through Chonju to Taegu to Pohang. Three fourths of South Korea was now held by North Korean forces.
From an island south of Mokp’o, an intermediate range missile with a Global Positioning System Guidance system streaked to P’yongyang. It carried a twenty-kiloton warhead. When it detonated, it was one thousand feet over the political center of the city.
The tremendous machstem, the backpressure composed of eighteen hundred mile an hour winds of the explosion, wreaked havoc and destruction for four thousand meters in every direction. The heat ignited fires such that the entire circumference of the blast was revealed by satellites to be a huge blackened spot upon the earth. The blast was slightly larger than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Jason Thornton’s phone rang. It was General Craig. “I just informed the SECDEF. He asked me to give you a direct call. Sir, the South Koreans launched a nuclear strike on Pyongyang. Our satellites just picked it up. The nuclear genie is out of the bottle. We think it was around a twenty-kiloton weapon detonated as an aerial burst. The electromagnetic pulse was pretty significant, but it seemed to be tailored more towards the heat and blast aspects of the spectrum. Thank God, we didn’t have an AWACs in there. The South Koreans did, but it seems to still be flying and reporting. We can’t say at this stage where the fallout will go for certain, but the winds are generally from the south and the west this time of year. China should get some of it, if not the majority of the fallout. We also picked up some ominous transmissions from the South Korean leadership to an elite artillery unit. We think they might be going tactical nuclear as well.”
“Is there any response from North Korea or China?”
“No, sir, we haven’t intercepted any at the moment, but things can change at any second.”
“Very well. Keep me informed of anything and everything of significance.”
“Yes, Mr. President. I or one of the staff will call you in seconds of anything occurring.”
In the ten-minute interval of flight time to cover the three hundred miles, a phone call went from Peking to an underground bunker complex two hundred feet below a granite mountain. The call was taken as the warhead exploded. In the phone call, the launch site was identified, it’s plotted trajectory, and the size of the warhead the missile carried.
At the same time, just north of Taegu, three maneuver battalions of the People’s 24th Infantry Regiment were converging for an assault on the critical road junctions of the Taegu and Hayang road. The South Korean self propelled 155mm. howitzer battalion received the fire order. The battalion commander checked the classified message against his code, had the special munition loaded into his Jeep and drove to Alpha battery, his “Go-To” battery, and informed the battery commander to load and fire it. “Captain, you are to personally check the firing data and lay of the firing gun yourself. You know what the warhead is.”
Very grimly, the Korean artillery captain nodded, “Yes, sir, I do. I just hate to use it over our own soil.”
“I know, Captain, we all do. There is little else we can do. The North is at the final line of resistance. We will retreat no more. Without United Nations or at least American support, we will cease to exist in a week if we do not use all of our assets. Fire the damned thing.” The Captain did as he was ordered. The special warhead was loaded into the 155 mm. howitzer, and fifteen seconds and twelve miles away, a one-half-kiloton nuclear weapon detonated over the North Korean Peoples 24th Infantry regiment at an altitude of five hundred feet. A very small mushroom cloud arose in a matter of seconds. Fires began to rage on the north side of Taegu. The southerly breezes began to gently move the cloud of alpha particles northward. The 24th Infantry Regiment of the Peoples’ Army no longer existed. Those in the supply trains who survived the initial blast and heat would die in forty-eight hours of gamma radiation poisoning, in seventy-two hours to ninety-six hours of bacterial infection of their massive third degree burns, all in spite of the anti-radiation pills issued to them by their government.
Ten minutes after the phone call from Peking was received, the North Korean leadership gave the launch order. The first missile struck the South Korean missile launch site. The island and the city of Makp’o disappeared under a ten-kiloton blast.
Jason Thornton’s phone rang again. Thornton dreaded picking it up. He knew what it meant and was overwhelmed with apprehension.
“What do you have, General?” not knowing for certain with whom he spoke.
“Mr. President, the North has retaliated with a nuclear strike on the South Korean launch site. We have no idea how many exchanges will occur before it ends. This one was a rather small blast, smaller than the one the South hit Pyongyang with. We figure in the ten- to twelve-kiloton range. The launch site was a small island off the southwest tip of South Korea. The provincial capital of Makp’o will get a good dose of the fallout, and sure felt the heat and blast. Damage assessment with greater detail will take a couple of hours pending analysis of satellite photos after the smoke clears. The fires will obscure the pictures to some degree. We believe the North Korean leadership was not in Pyongyang, but rather are orchestrating the war from an underground bunker deep within a mountain. There are several such possible sites, and we don’t know for sure which one they are at. It might be that different divisions of the leadership are in different ones; the military in one, Kim, jong un in another, other aspects of government in others.”
“I will have the Press Secretary call you for whatever details you think are appropriate for a press release. I would like to get that out in thirty minutes, before the news networks scoop us again. Have a list ready, and Roger McCall will call you in about fifteen minutes. I’ll leave it to your discretion as to what constitutes pertinent details.”
“Yes, Mr. President, I’ll have something together in the next few minutes. Thank you, Mr. President.” Jason Thornton hung up the phone. He punched his intercom button for his secretary, Peggy Parsons. “Peggy, get Roger McCall on the phone. Have him call General Craig at the Pentagon bunker right now. I mean, right now!”
Thirty minutes later, a second missile launched by North Korea streaked one hundred and twenty miles into space where over half a dozen satellites were orbiting overhead.
The small nuclear blast of three kilotons was designed to maximize the electromagnetic pulse of the nuclear explosion. All the satellites within three thousand miles went blank. Their cameras were burned, their communications circuits fried by the electromagnet energy from the pulse of the blast.
Roger McCall was giving his press briefing on the first exchange when President Thornton’s red phone rang again.
“General Craig here, sir. It has escalated. The South took out a North Korean regimental sized unit with a battlefield sized nuke, Mr. President.” There was a pause, some yelling was heard in the background, and then a hush, followed by a loud “Oh, shit!” from General Craig came over Thornton’s phone.
“Sir, the North just launched a missile into space. It took out our satellites over that region as well as the South’s. We’re pretty blind as of right now, sir! It took out some of our Global Positioning Satellites as well as some of our observation and communications satellites. I’ll order an AWACs into the area ASAP, Mr. President, but it might be several hours before we can get something there. Right now, we’re blind.”
“How much will this hurt South Korea, General? I suspect it is a devastating blow.”
“It is, sir. It should have affected the South Korean AWACs as well. We presume it is still in flight, circling around fifty thousand feet, but we can’t detect that. This loss of satellites also crippled our carrier battle groups standing in international waters. We’re waiting on reports from those carrier battle groups on damage assessment from the electromagnetic pulse right now. Reports would routinely come over the Integrated Link 16 Network where we would all receive the same information simultaneously. Now, without those satellites, it might have to be transmitted the old way, and up through the chain of command. If our Link 16 is down, we’re back to Cold War level war fighting, Mr. President, at least for that area of the world.”
As General Craig was speaking, a flight of three Mig 31s was climbing to fifty thousand feet altitude and engaging the South Korean AWACs with air to air missiles. The AWACs went down in flames after the missile hit the fuselage just behind the port wing. The entire plane was engulfed in flames and disintegrated. No parachutes opened.
“I’ll call Ed McCluskey and see what he can get out of the National Reconnaisance Office for replacements or repositioning some of our other satellites. I’ll get back to you, General.”
At that moment, Peggy Parsons walked into the Oval Office. “Mr. President, the DCI is on the line for you.”
“Thank you, Peggy.” Thornton punched another button on the phone. “I guess you just got the word, Ed. What’s your assessment, or is it too early? You couldn’t have had more than five minutes.”
“Less than that, Mr. President. The Director of the National Reconnaisance Office just called me. We’re pretty blind at the moment. He and his staff are working on an assessment and how we can best get back online, so to speak.”
“Ed, do we have to have a meeting here, or would the time be better spent working on solutions with the various staffs? Your people at CIA and the National Recon Office boys, doing your thing, I hope together. You know I would rather have people working on the problem than sitting in a meeting jawing about potential solutions.”
“I appreciate that, Mr. President. For right now, I think it is better if we have time to get our potential responses and alternatives together. We need a little time down here, but if you feel the need, we can fly up there from here in Langley.”
“No, Ed, stay down there and let me know when you feel a meeting is appropriate. I am sure you will liaison as required with the Joint Chiefs. They are mad as hell, I’m sure. I don’t like our carrier battle groups sitting out there blind. While there is no threat to them that I am aware of, I don’t like them compromised in any way.”
